What the Sekunjalo Delft Big Band have been up to

Published 22 March 2018, supplied by IOL
Sekunjalo Delft Big Band was established in 2008, in an initiative by the Department of Social Development and an NGO, called COAST (Cape Outdoor Adventure Service and Training), aimed at offering Delft’s vulnerable youth an alternative to the anti-social influences around them.
 
Legendary jazz trumpeter, Ian Smith, was chosen to head the project as its Musical Director.
 
Although the funding was withdrawn after six months, Smith continued working with the core group that had shown great talent and interest, developing their music knowledge and technique to what you can experience today.
First eight years
For eight years, Smith honed the musical talent of his young charges, teaching them to read music and play big band arrangements, as well as exposing them to a performance circuit that generated further opportunities.
 
The original band members, many of whom are in the current line-up, attribute much of their exposure to life outside of the confines of Delft to him.
 
Over the years, a few significant steps were taken, which established the music project as not just an NPC (2011), but also as a sustainable youth development project, with the addition of a feeder band and a music academy (2015). The band recorded its only CD to date, in 2015. Copies can be bought at most live performances, as well as online, at www.loot.co.za.
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SA ready to take over BRICS Business Council chairmanship

Published 22 March 2018, written by an ANA reporter

South Africa will become the first BRICS nation to hold the rotating chairmanship of the BRICS Business Council for a second time.

Africa is set for a decade of “unbelievable growth and prosperity”.

This is according to Dr Iqbal Survé, chairman of the SA chapter of the BRICS Business Council, who will take up the annual rotating chairmanship of the overall BRICS Business Council (BBC) at the mid-term meeting which takes place in Shanghai, China, next week.

The BRICS membership is made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Survé said the mid-term meeting was very important, coming as it does a few short months before the 10th BRICS summit in Gauteng on July 25-27, with the BRICS Business Council set to meet in KwaZulu-Natal on July 22-23. A BRICS Business Forum meeting takes place on July 25 in Gauteng.

Established in March 2013 during the fifth BRICS summit in Durban, this year will see South Africa become the first BRICS nation to hold the rotating chairmanship of the BRICS Business Council for a second time. The BRICS Business Council aims to facilitate co-operation between the five countries in various sectors, as well as promote trade and industry.

Commenting on the growing momentum on the African Continental Free Trade Area which saw 44 countries sign the AfCFTA in Kigali, Rwanda, this week, while a number of others, including SA, signed the Kigali Declaration which committed to the establishment of the African economic community which aspires to the free movement of persons and goods to facilitate trade, Survé said: “This is absolutely the best thing to happen to Africa in a very long time.”

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